What is Human?

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With the upcoming release of The Last Voyage of the Demeter, the story of Dracula tormenting the crew of a boat on their way to London, we thought we’d go back and look at some of our favorite monsters throughout cinema.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Written by Caleb Madden

I'm up to bat and I’m picking one of the greatest monsters of all time:

The Xenomorph!

Is there a more terrifying monster in da movies?

I don't think so! So, today we are going back to one of the masters of the monster genre, Ridley Scott. Specifically, we are gonna talk about his 2017 return to the Alien franchise, Alien: Covenant.

One last ride

It is no secret that the original 1979 Alien is one of the greatest monster movies of all time, not to mention the wildly different sequel Aliens. But, not much praise is given to the two prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. There isn't much to say about Prometheus, but Covenant is a whole different story.

After the release of Alien, Ridley Scott stepped away from the IP letting Fox run wild. With that, all hope was lost for another classic Alien movie until the early 2000s when Scott decided to take another swing at the Alien ball. But this time he decided to get even more existential.

What is Human?

The biggest theme that Alien: Covenant explores is creation and its connection to being human. What does it mean to be a human? If God created man and man is like God then is to be human to create? That is the main question that Covenant’s antagonist asks.

That antagonist is David, an evolved form of AI robot, or as the franchise calls them, “synthetics.” The problem with David is that he is programmed with a few screws loose and now he wants to be like God and create new life.

The success of all this convoluted plot hinges on two things: Michael Fassbender’s incredible dual performance, and Ridley Scott’s complete inability to direct human characters.

If you look back on Scott’s filmography you will see movies about robots, aliens, and gods in the form of humans (Gladiator). All these movies have main characters that are far from what we know to be human.

Alien: Covenant is no exception and Scott leans into this trope of his harder than ever. He hits it out of the park.

Creator or Created?

What makes Alien: Covenant one of the great monster movies is that it wrestles with who the real monster is.

On the surface the monster of this movie is the infamous Xenomorph that first appeared back in 1979. But digging a little deeper we see that perhaps the creator of the Xenomorph, David, is the monster. His hate for humankind runs deeper than the Xenomorph’s desire to blow a hole through your chest with its tiny mouth.

Digging even deeper than that we see that perhaps the problem starts with David’s creator. The movie opens with this spectacular scene between Guy Pearce (playing a young Peter Weyland) and Michael Fassbender (playing David). Here we see the core of David as a character: He’s cursed with having to mindlessly serve a dying human while knowing that David himself is a far superior creature. This leads us to the question: are humans the real monster?

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